GNU Go

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This software is a free program that plays the game of Go. GNU Go has played thousands of games on the NNGS Go server.

GNU Go 2.6 and the development versions run under Cgoban in X-Windows using the Go Modem Protocol. An ASCII interface and an Emacs mode are also supported.

GNU/Linux

GNU Go 2.6 and the development versions run well on GNU/Linux systems. If you are running X-Windows, a beautiful way of using GNU Go is with Cgoban, a powerful many-purpose Go board. An ASCII interface and Emacs mode are also supported.

Windows

Piotr Lakomy and Nils Lohner did the first Windows ports of GNU Go. With GNU Go 2.6 there is now good support for compiling GNU Go under Microsoft Windows. You can use your choice of compilers with GNU Go 2.6:

• DJGPP
• Cygwin, with or without GLIB
• MINGW32
• Visual C++ using Project files
• Visual C++ using NMake

You cannot (conveniently) use CGoban under Windows but instead you can use Jago, a Java client. Jago also works under GNU/Linux. Without a client, you can still run GNU Go in ASCII mode.

A windows binary gnugo26b.zip and source gnugo26s.zip for GNU Go 2.6 may be found in the Simtel archive.

Other Free Go Programs

• ``Artist'' (Lim Jaebum) has released a program called Baduki under the GNU GPL. You can download his program from his web page. It is very important for there to be more than one free Go program, and Baduki is a good program. You can play matches between Baduki and GNU Go quite easily using CGoban.
• PubGo+ is a set of C++ classes for Go Programming by P. J. Leonard. It is published under the GPL.
• Gtkgo is another GPL'd Go program. Recently sources to gtkgo showed up in the GNOME CVS.
• The NNGS server source is published under the GPL.
• Xgospel is a GPL'd X-Window client program, more specialized than CGoban but also excellent, for playing on the servers. (This client will not help you play with GNU Go on your local machine.)
• Sgf2tex, a GPL'd system for typesetting Go games in TeX by Daniel Bump and Reid Augustin, including metafont sources and a perl script for translating Smart Go Format (SGF) files
• Jago is now under the GPL.
• gnugoclient 1.1. Not a part of GNU Go per se, this is the program used to connect GNU Go to NNGS and play games without supervision. It is released under the GPL.

Links

• Download GNU Go 2.6. If you can, please use a mirror.
• The GNU Go development page contains recent development versions and further links.
• HTML Documentation for GNU Go.
• Palm Go, derived from GNU Go 1.2.
• The Computer Go Ladder. GNU Go is a participant.
• The Computer Go Mailing List
• Markus Enzenberger's on-line Computer Go Bibliography!
• Proposal for an online computer Go journal, A TODO list for the journal, and a mailing list archive.

Please send FSF & GNU inquiries & questions to gnu@gnu.org. There are also other ways to contact the FSF.

Please send comments on these web pages to webmasters@www.gnu.org, send other questions to gnu@gnu.org.

Copyright (C) 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA

Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.

Updated: 28 Feb 2000 bump